jumpers, sweaters and the like
29 Aug: Separated by a Common Language has a nice article about the differences in British and American clothing names.
Preposition Project
A pretty amazing site for those interested in prepositions, but its not for the faint of heart (WARNING: Heavy Linguistic Content). The site characterizes 673 senses of 334 English prepositions. If you’ve ever been tempted to create your own dictionary, a look at this site and the workload required to do lexicography right will almost certainly dissuade you.
Erin’s Denying Requests
24 Aug: More on how words are selected for inclusion in “the” dictionary by Erin McKean of The Dictionary Evangelist.
Sex Change v. Gender Reassignment
24 Aug: Joey DiGuglielmo, editor of the Washington Blade, has an interesting article on use of these terms and, more generally, on how newspapers use style guides. Some interesting insights into how PC language is used in the journalistic trenches.
Language Burier
On Monday, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show did a story on making English the official language of the US. Too funny.
Copyright 1997-2007, by David Wilton
